N.: All people that are here today are very much interested in studying what we call business communication. And they all
are studying meetings. But the problem is that we have some difficulties
with the
materials which we can use for the research. And one of the
problems they are very much interested in
is various cross-cultural problems
which arise when people from various language cultures get together and
have business meetings. I'm sure you have
quite a lot of experience of this sort.

A:
Do you think there
is any difference between the situations
when a) native speakers communicate between themselves, b)
natives communicate in English with
non-native speakers, c) non-natives
from different countries communicate in English?

Simon:
I think you're drawing a distinction between a native speaker and
non-native speaker. There's clearly one big difference just in how easily and
comfortably
and quickly you can speak - the language itself. So if the
meeting is in all native speakers, I think
it also depends whether they're all
native speakers from one speech community. If, for example, you've got all
native British speakers, I think
there's a certain relaxation, you can use a
certain kind of humour, certain kinds of
exchange of humour, a slight part
of exchange where everyone is confident about what they can say, it won't
cause offense and the people will
have the same sense of humour. So, that
can lead the atmosphere to the natural
relax. And clearly the speech can be
much more fluent, much more colloquial. As
soon as you've got somebody who is
not British, even if they're another native speaker, you have to start
to filter your language and it becomes, I think, a little bit less warm and
friendly - not because you don't like an American, but you can't be so
confident and relaxed in using the same
things like humour. As soon as it's a non-native speaker, then you have
to start to filter your language quite
carefully and it depends on how experienced you are in dealing with non-native
speakers. I spend most of my life speaking to non-native speakers, so it's
quite easy for me to sort of trying to use some of the more colloquial
language and moderate my speech a little bit, and other people. But then
there are the inter-cultural aspects; then, Ithink, it's nothing to do
with native speaker - non-native speaker, it's to do with British particular
cultural background.

Anna:
Thank you. Well, we have some stereotypes - it's quite natural, and when we
were talking about interruptions during a meeting, -we found out that for
Russians it's quite natural to interrupt a person without listening to
the end of the speech. Is it natural for a British person?

Simon:
It's natural to interrupt, but I think mere are ways of interrupting,
and as an English person you certainly don't speak over somebody. And if you
want to interrupt, you wait for a cue, you find the right opportunity to
interrupt, the right kind of pause in the other person's speech, and then you
come in. Whereas, I think, the interruption in Russian context, from my
experience being here, is a little bit more
abrupt, and a little bit more... that
you would actually interrupt somebody when
they were speaking. But also I think because of that it needs a
different way of interrupting because
Russians don't give the same opportunities for interruptions. Particularly at
first time I found myself sitting, and waiting and waiting for the
opportunity when I could come in, and there aren't the same signals - or
if there are, I can't read them,
when they come from the Russian side, as when
is the right tune to interrupt.

Anna:
Interruptions can be appropriate and less appropriate during informal
and formal meetings. Is it appropriate to interrupt during a formal meeting?

Simon: I think it depends what stage of the meeting you're at and what
of interruption is going on. So, I mean, if somebody is making a kind of
mini-presentation, if the meeting has started and is now over to "Ms Brown
is going to
tell us about the sales and figures for the last month", then
normally you would let them finish the
initial presentation. Or there may be
certain appropriate moments of the
presentation when there's a pause and it's
clear that questions and interruptions are
welcome. But you wouldn't kind of
to interrupt somebody who was in the middle of making or finishing a
presentation. But if there's a kind of free
discussion going on, then people, I think,
do interrupt each other while they are talking and it's quite acceptable.
But, of
course, I would think I would be much more careful if I were interrupted by my
director, Tony Andrews, than I would if I were
interrupted by one of my colleagues from
the English Language Teaching
Department, So this power of relationships interferes.

M:
You mentioned the signs people use for signaling their
desire to interrupt. Can you name some of them?

Simon: I think the
first sign is very much actually body language. It's a
very subconscious thing that most people
aren't aware of - I may be aware of
it because I'm involved in language and language teaching anyway. But as the
other person is talking there are certain kinds of eye contact and sort
of little very subtle hand
movements which give an indication that I want to say something. And
then the interruption itself, I think a typical way to interrupt is initially
by saying something like, "Yes, I see what you're
saying, but..," or "I quite agree, that's
exactly what I think and that reminds
me,,," - so, to sort of tag on to whatever
they're saying. Or it's some initial agreement, or comment, or support,
and then to lead it off in whatever
direction it will survive that I want to take the conversation, I think
that's the most typical way to
interrupt and take over the turns.

A:
You certainly have the experience of being a chairperson. What are
the functions of the chairperson?

Simon: I think,
firstly it's to see that the meeting reaches its objectives
within the time available, and that you cover the agenda, and if there
are some
points that are decided. I think it's important to make sure that everybody gets the opportunity to express their opinion and to give
their input.

A:
And if a person is too shy to express their opinion how to deal with
it?

Simon: Well, if
somebody is too shy in business contacts, it's a bit
unlikely. Obviously, within a meeting everyone will have a role, and it
may be on a particular point of the
agenda and this person sitting in the corner
has nothing much to contribute. But if somebody should have an opinion,
or some information, or something to offer to the context being discussed, if
they're a bit quiet and shy and the two loud people are talking away and
they aren't
saying anything, then it's the chairman's role, I think, to interrupt, and get
the floor, and offer it to the quiet person. And, if
necessary, to ask direct questions rather
than just saying, "Have you got anything to say?" but "Well, Nina, I
know that you've got a lot of experience in
Business English, and that you have knowledge about this, and perhaps
you could tell us what you think about that - so that you're
helping them by telling exactly what kind
of contribution you're hoping for.
That's the main thing to keep moving along the agenda without losing time,
so that you do cover everything you
want to cover, to make sure everybody
contributes, and to make sure there are
some concrete decisions made or actions that people are going to take, and
that everybody round the table knows and understands what has been agreed,
what everyone should be doing.

A:
Is there a certain hierarchy between the participants?

Simon: It depends on
the meeting. Obviously, often there is some hierarchy. If it's an internal
company meeting, everybody has a certain
status within the company. But very often the hierarchy will vary
depending upon the subject which is
being discussed, so different people will have
different levels of expertise about a particular problem or a particular
aspect for discussing. If I think
about the British Council, clearly Tony Andrews,
the director of the British Council in
Russia is the most senior person if he's holding meetings
here. But if we're talking about education, my colleague
Elena Minskaya who is the assistant
director for education is the person who
is the most knowledgeable and the most
authoritative in this area. And so,
in one sense she is higher than him in
hierarchy in this particular discussion. And I think in most companies
today or most business situations today,
although there's some kind of hierarchy, people's opinions are valued for
their worth rather than for the
position of the person who states the opinion, so everybody has the
opportunity to speak and if their opinion seems to
make sense and to be well argued, it's
possible for them to disagree with somebody much higher in the hierarchy.

S: What about the opinion of the chairperson: can they have the right
to develop their opinion, can they dominate or impose ideas?

Simon: I think in
general it's not good for a chairperson to dominate.
Again, it depends on the situation. Sometimes the chairperson is in a
very powerful position. Sometimes
when I'm chairing a meeting in my role with
the British Council about some ideas and proposals as to what we should
do in language teaching, I'm the one
with all the money or with the decision to
spend the money or not. And in that case I think it's quite important
for me to be quiet, because I don't
want to say, "Well, I think, we should do this"
and then everyone says, "Well, if we want
him to agree to spend the money, we'd all better agree with him". So,
as soon as I've said it, it kills the
discussion to some extent, So then I prefer to say, because I generally want
to know what the opinion of the people in the meeting is, as to the
best thing. Even if at the end it may be my job to make the decision, either I
agree with them or not. But I have to try
to keep my opinion submerged to
allow the discussion to develop properly and fairly. I can still contribute
things from my perspective. It
would be silly for me not to tell them things
about the British Council rates and
regulations about spending money, their
policy, and so let them go off and decide
something that clearly we could not
support. But I don't want to dominate, I don't want to force anyone. On
other occasions the chairperson is just one
member of the meeting and they have
some extra responsibilities of the kind I've spoken about earlier. But
still, they want to contribute, and just
because they're a chairperson doesn't
mean that they don't have an opinion and
they can't contribute the same as
anybody else around the table. So, it depends. The role of the chairperson
alone doesn't necessarily give you any particular strength or position.
It depends what your role is in the
meeting, and what the power relationships
are, and what you want to achieve.

S: And if the
chairperson has to bring a point to the vote, does the
chairperson take part in voting?

Simon: Again, if you
have a formally set up committee with a voting system then that would usually
set up what the chairperson's role is. Sometimes the chairperson has a vote
and then, if the vote is split fifty-fifty, the chairperson has another vote,
deciding vote. Sometimes the
chairperson doesn't vote, but only if it's split fifty-fifty then tie or she
may cast a vote to make the final decision. But sometimes a chairperson might
be an outsider with no voting power at all, who is deliberately chosen as a
kind of neutral non-voting person.
That should be made clear from the start.

M: Are there any "golden rules" to make meetings successful?

Simon:
Yes, well, I don't think they're golden rules, but I think, firstly, you
need to have all the right people there. So, it's no good if somebody who is
crucial to the decision is missing, and every time the discussion gets going
you say,
"Ah, but we need to know what Sergey thinks about this", and
Sergey is not there and so the whole
meeting will falter. So, you need to
make sure that you have everybody there who has important information or
an important part to play in the
decisions that you're going to make. And you need to have very clear
objectives from the start, which not just the
chairperson but everybody who comes to the
meeting knows - what you're planning
to do or what you want to achieve during that meeting. Ideally,
you should have all the right information
available - briefings, documents, and ideally they should have been
circulated before the meeting. And I think
you need a time-table, and an agenda, and a good chairperson to keep
to that agenda.

N: Do you think it is important who is in the chair - a native
or a non-native? For instance, if the tool they are using for communication
is English?

Simon: It makes no difference. I think, a good chairperson is a good chairperson.

N: OK, so, the skill will be more important than the language.

Simon: Yes. Clearly, you need a minimum language level otherwise then
the lack of language will interfere...

N: So, here effectiveness will depend not on the language but
on the skill, knowledge of the subject, knowledge of the people.

Simon: Yes.

N: You've got a large experience of meetings. Can you give a
few illustrations from your experience in Hungary or in Russia which are
interesting as culturally biased situations - where there are some differences
in behaviour, style, skills, or whatever?

Simon: I think that
the place I had to learn the most about conducting
meetings was
Vietnam.
I don't know if that was meetings
or negotiations in many cases. But there people are much slower to get down to
business, and relationships have to be built over a much longer
period of time before you can get down to
business. And actually in a purer
sense the first meeting with a potential business partner in
Vietnam you would not discuss at all the subject of business. And the very
first time I
arrived and I was meeting a gentleman who ran a training center and I was
hoping to
arrange to run courses there of the English language and
professional skills in his training center.
And he wanted to meet me, and chat to me, and talk to me about my family, and
where I came from, and my history,
and so on, and he didn't expect to actually talk at all about his
training center or about the courses I
wanted to ran, certainly not about the
money or anything like that. And of course
I was expecting when I went to the
meeting to discuss all these things, needing to reach an agreement, to
know where I could hold these courses in a
few weeks' time. And he came away
very frustrated. At a typical meeting, even if it's not the first meeting,
you sit and you drink tea. And the
teapot is there and little cups of tea, and
you pour cups of tea for each other and
also the host will pour cups of tea
for the visitor, and you talk about the
tea, again talk about family, health
and lots, lots of things - for at leas
twenty minutes or so before you could
raise the subject of business. Now, some
modern young Vietnamese are moving
very much towards me western model of business. So, it's a little bit
confusing. Sometimes, once I've been there a while, I would go to a
meeting expecting to sit and drink tea and
I find myself with some young
mobile Vietnamese, very cosmopolitan tight, young person who wanted to
get down to business, while I was sitting
there drinking tea. But that was
quite a change. Here in
Russia I find people interrupt the meeting more
easily - I'm not talking about interruptions as we were talking earlier. But
if I'm having a meeting with a Russian colleague and quite often it's the phone
that goes in the middle of our meeting, and they're off answer the phone, then
they'll talk on the phone, then they'll come back to our meeting, and
then theyll remember they wanted to tell somebody something so that...
And I found that very disconcerting when I first arrived here, because the
British way of it is that when you're in a meeting with somebody, you're in
the meeting, and don't interrupt - usually, unless there's some very urgent
problem. So, I think - I don't know if you agree, - that's a difference.

N: Yes, It would be very interesting to know what was the
most embarrassing
in the way the Russian people speak or behave at
meetings when you were fresh, your first
impressions?

Simon: I think that
was the sort of interruptions was the thing that was
most disconcerting for me. I think also
Russians are a bit more direct than
British would be in interrupting, but also
generally in arguing. So, at times
early on I thought there was a... I thought, "Oh my Dear, there's a bit of an
argument going on here", and it wasn't really an argument in the sense of
being anything negative, it was just a normal healthy discussion. But not
too much of that, to be honest. I
think it was more that tendency of people to
start often do other thing during a meeting...

N: That's
very interesting. About the turn taking, I have
noticed that when Russian people interrupt they usually avoid using
specific gambits or specific body language to just signal that they are
ready to interrupt. They interrupt
directly, they just start talking, paying no attention to whatever the
previous speaker feels or thinks, they just talk as if they
were talking within themselves. Is your impression different?

Simon: No, I think you're right. Although, either it's changing or there's a
cultural sensitivity to me as a foreigner. I don't often find that I'm being talked
over in that way, although I have witnessed it and observed it
happening when Russians interacted with
each other. I don't know if that's
because the people I mix with are more culturally sensitive because so many of
them are language teachers and so on. Or whether in general Russians are
now sensitive to foreigners and do
behave inside the different groups differently.

So, I haven't really found it happening to me much, but I agree absolutely
when I watch Russians interact.

A: Are there any things that you consider absolutely inappropriate during a meeting?

Simon: I think, the
general rules of social interaction are similar in a
meeting to anywhere else, so the things that would be "inappropriate " in
any social interaction can be
absolutely inappropriate in a meeting as well. I
suppose, eating - I don't say that any
eating or drinking is inappropriate, -but
eating noisily in any way. I think, showing attention is something that is
different in different cultures. In
Hungary I often saw people in meetings,
in staff meetings at the University where I worked looking as if they were
more or less fallen asleep. And that seemed to be accepted,
but in other cases they actually were listening, and if you asked them
afterwards, you find out that they have been following, but they were even
slumped back in their seats. That would be pretty rude in many cultures, I
think, and it would be a terrible sign of lack of interest, and so on.
But Hungarians said to me that old-fashioned styled meetings went on for many hours, and it was quite
normal for people to sort of shut their eyes, to switch off. But I'm not sure if that would
be inappropriate in a meeting.

M: As far as language structures are concerned, would it be appropriate
to use long sentences or it would be better to use short utterances?

Simon:
I think, expressing your ideas directly as clearly as possible and as
precisely as possible... Sometimes you can express things very clearly and
precisely by using very long words, technical words, - as long as you're sure
that everyone else in the room is familiar with those words. So, I don't think that
you should always avoid long words, or technical words, or
complex structures if that's the most appropriate way to make your point
clearly and quickly. But using
overformal language, overflowery language to impress people with your
wit or with your ability to construct that
wonderful language is generally not a good thing. A meeting is time, so
every minute in a meeting is very
expensive. It's a matter
of people's time and you don't want to waste any of that time.

M:
There are different kinds of meetings and die language and the style
of conducting them are also different. There are brainstorming meetings,
problem-solving meetings...

Simon: I'm not sure if
it's different - a brainstorming meeting and a
problem-solving meeting, but I'm sure if you analyze it. But I think that
the biggest difference is in the
relationships between the people who are
there: how well they know each other, what is the power difference. So,
if I'm having a meeting with two or three of my colleagues who I work with
every day, and whom I know very
well, and whom I relaxed with, then it's much less formal, the language
would be much more colloquial, much closer
to everyday language. If I go and I have a meeting with somebody
from the Russian Ministry of Education,
whom I may not know as well, and
here there are perhaps more people and the relationship between us is
much more tentative, then the language is
much less direct, there's much more
formal "I’ll say my bit, then you’ll say your bit, there's much less
interruptions and much more perhaps compliments to each other. So, I
think, it has to do with who's there and what the relationship between
them is, as much as what is the natural appropriacy for the meeting.

A: When it comes to teaching business meetings, do you think it's
essential to teach students all those phrases and gambits?

S: I think it's very,
very useful for people, because if they're non-native speaker and they're
going to go and sit in a meeting, and they're
going to want to interrupt, or they're going to want to participate. And
it's these little phrases or gambits which really do help them to do
that, and help them to do that without appearing rude because if they haven't got the language, if they
haven't got this kind of phrases, they've got two alternatives: they stay quiet and they
don't contribute or they sort of blunder into the conversation and interrupt in a
way which may be interpreted as rade or at least not very professional.

N: What kind of communicative qualities should a foreign

Simon:
Communicative qualities? Actually, I'm not sure this is what you're
looking for... I
think in Sankt Petersburg I spoke about intercultural
competence, something which people are
increasingly aware of, especially in
business contacts. So, certainly, intercultural competence is essential.
And by intercultural competence I mean a
cultural sensitivity and a cultural awareness. Most communication nowadays is
taking place between people of many different nationalities, so it's not
enough to teach somebody in Russia British
culture. Or even British and American culture, because they
may need their English to communicate with a
German, with a Japanese, etc. And you can't teach them in details about
one of these different cultures. OK, if they
are in business that deals always with
Japan, they will
learn more and more and more about Japanese culture. But what you need
to give them is the skills to be sensitive to other cultures, to be aware of in
what way Russian culture may be different from another culture. Things
which they may take for granted as being the right way to do things may be
done completely different in another culture. And you can't teach them how it's
done differently in all these different cultures. But you can teach them to
ask questions, to be sensitive, to try to find out, so that they have this sensitivity.